They’re just straight up evil.

    • TachyonTele@piefed.social
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      7 days ago

      What’s really insane is they don’t even want the knowledge. They just want knowledge in any capacity to go away.

      • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
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        No, they want the knowledge but only for themselves, after all during the guilded age, the educated where the rich and the rest where ignorant so they couldn’t push back and be controlled. PBS and NPR spread knowledge for the masses and THAT is what they want to stop

        • TachyonTele@piefed.social
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          I don’t think you’ve seen who’s doing all the destruction. These people do not care about gaining knowledge.

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Keep them just smart enough to work the machines, but too stupid to coordinate uprising.

      ~ George Carlin, paraphrased

    • chilicheeselies@lemmy.world
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      Thats a great idea! We should evangelize that. That woukd be a great movement. Cancel one od your streaming services to suppport seasame street

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        Only around 15% of the PBS budget comes from the federal treasury via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), thanks to decades of privatization. NPR’s budget is as little as 1% from the CBP.

        Consequently, both networks have suffered from a creeping enshittification, with a rising tide of advertisement and ad-supported content taking over both networks and the forced sale of some of its most valuable assets (PBS licensing Sesame Street to Warner Brothers, for instance) to finance continued operations.

        Like, by all means. Cancel your Netflix. Cancel Disney. Support public broadcasting. But this isn’t a solution in the long term, any more than cancelling Basic Cable for Netflix was a way to fix the fully privatized entertainment system. We’re still surrendering our social capital to private interests, bit by bit (or in this case by massive chunk).

        This is a stab wound. We can patch it, but we shouldn’t mistake this as to anyone’s material benefit.

      • lukaro@lemmy.zip
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        6 days ago

        Make sure to list that as reason. If enough people drop Disney to fund NPR, Disney might buy a politician to do something about it.

  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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    The White House called for an end to federal funding for NPR and PBS in April, claiming that they “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’” Trump also fired the CPB’s three Democratic board members, who refused to leave their posts. Trump sued them this week in an attempt to force them out.

    Translation: they don’t regurgitate right wing talking points.

    These people are disgusting.

    • rozodru@lemmy.world
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      They also educate and inform people. That’s a problem for the GOP. They don’t want the American people, ESPECIALLY low income people, to have access to free education and information that PBS and NPR provides. They need to ensure the population is stupid thus easier to control.

      So America they’ve taken your medicade, they’ve taken the ability of a good portion of your country to be able to eat, they’re taking immigrants, tourists, or people that they don’t agree with to camps, they’re taking your education, they’re taxing you with tariffs, they have a gestapo, and they’ll be taking away more rights from Women and POC. I have to ask…how much longer until you start to get a little bit violent?

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        They also educate and inform people.

        Eh. They are increasingly polluted by their private sponsors and corporate partners. I’ve given up on listening to NPR in the mornings because so much of it is very obviously native advertisement or propaganda (particularly bad in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th, with broadcasters uncritically repeating IDF hoaxes like the “40 decapitated babies” line).

        So America they’ve taken your medicade, they’ve taken the ability of a good portion of your country to be able to eat, they’re taking immigrants, tourists, or people that they don’t agree with to camps, they’re taking your education, they’re taxing you with tariffs, they have a gestapo, and they’ll be taking away more rights from Women and POC. I have to ask…how much longer until you start to get a little bit violent?

        I got a “Blue Alert” on my phone not two days ago, thanks to a vigilante attacking an ICE agent. Dozens of armed cops were all over the Mayor’s Office yesterday because of a rumor of a Palestinian protest that never materialized. FFS, three different people tried to shoot the President in a two month span.

        I don’t think the problem is a lack of violence. What Americans largely lack is coordination and institutional support. A thousand little lone wolves don’t a revolution make.

        • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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          They are increasingly polluted by their private sponsors and corporate partners.

          Gee, I wonder why they have those. Could it be because of the extreme cuts to their budget by conservatives?

          Your apathy is part of the problem.

  • ileftreddit@piefed.social
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    It’s not even September and they’ve dismantled like 80% of the shit that makes being alive worthwhile

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      dismantled

      https://www.npr.org/2025/05/13/1250902337/npr-cpb-public-radio-funding-101

      Today, NPR receives only about 1% of its operating budget directly from the federal government.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/business/media/npr-pbs-funding-cuts.html

      Will NPR and PBS survive?

      Yes. NPR gets about 2 percent of its annual budget directly from federal grants, including from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; for PBS, that amount is about 15 percent.

      It’ll be a hit for PBS in particular, but it’s not gonna end NPR or PBS.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      makes being alive American worthwhile

      FTFY.

      We deliberately don’t get news about it, but China is making entire cities for the well-educated looking to return to China from the US. They are “taking the solar system” right now according to some experts, and are on their third space station among multiple lunar missions. ESA and other countries have also taken grand steps into space. International science and medical research forges ahead without us. There are countries effectively expanding their social safety nets and other than US involvement in Israel/the Middle East broadly, the world is at an all-time peak of peace and personal safety.

      You are being fed a cultivated image. This entire “free speech” catchphrase that we’ve been taught to scream at any offence is an illusion, a lie reinforced by every branch of media, which are in turn branches of the corporations that have long since nailed the coffin closed on actual democracy.

      Remember Dead Internet Theory? Dead America Theory. We died around Reagan, the country has been running on momentum and money. We won’t feel it until the money runs out and that’s why this current administration is a pile of bottom-feeding bilge rats scraping off whatever they can from taxpayers. They know the value of the American dollar is about to start plummeting, and climate change and other technological changes to the global stage will be the final flush of this toilet we’ve been trying to pretend we’re not spinning around.

      Our progress and species will go on, just not without America leading the way. Even if we got a “perfect” president and administration tomorrow they wouldn’t be able to undo this reverse-snowball that’s currently evaporating out of control.

      • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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        China is making entire cities for the well-educated looking to return to China from the US

        Can you tell me where some of these are? Or give me any info to look them up?

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          Keep in mind I’ve only visited China and have limited actual knowledge of culture and policy, but I know there’s been a large wave of Chinese investment in future education, infrastructure and entire cities being made with the express purpose of housing an anticipated population influx, particularly repatriation from other countries like the US. They offer tax-breaks and assistance for housing and other services, but these are specifically to returning Chinese, and I am not researched into what qualifies you for these benefits. I’m sure there are loads of info out there.

          Cities like Ordos have been ridiculed and made fun of for being “abandoned” but people forget that China’s policy-thinking stretches out over much larger timespans than most other developed nations. These are gleaming cities with automated taxies, ultra-efficient infrastructure and urban planning and they are starting to fill up. What’s wild is how many of the citizens in these new cities are obviously educated in America and everyone speaks English fairly well. They are also building and incentivizing higher education and tech-sector communities, making their own Silicon Valleys in multiple areas of China.

          I think the last pieces they are missing to truly set the groundwork for the Chinese Century are much more robust family-planning and subsiding childcare so they don’t suffer the same population-rot impacting every other capitalism-ravaged nation right now, and better immigration/integration policies. If they can start embracing multi-culturalism they will literally steal the torch from America, but I guess some old ways die hard.

          One of the best things going for them, and I have no idea how much they lean into it in reality, is the fact that despite being a capitalist country, they aren’t terrified of the word “socialism” so they won’t face riots from suggesting that maybe it’s okay for one person’s taxes to pay for someone else’s healthcare. Sense of community responsibility that works both ways is something absolutely squeezed out of American culture without a drop remaining.

  • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    Hypothetically if you wanted your country to become impoverished within the next five decades, what sort of things would you do that are different to what the current administration is doing?

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      They don’t want the country to be impoverished, and it’s ridiculous to suggest that.

      They just want the bottom 99.9% of the population to be impoverished. They’re already most of the way there.

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      The only differences I can think of is not chickening out on the tariffs and forcing the interest rate lower to kick off runaway inflation.

    • Mikrochip@feddit.org
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      I mean, technically there would be more direct measures, like using artillery to blow up infrastructure or destroying crop with flamethrowers.

  • AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    Fuck this administration, I hope they burn in the hell they believe in. I hope they all get cancer.

    I try my best to find redeeming qualities in everyone, but there is none to be found in them.

    • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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      Wrong Elmo, they’d probably do better with this shotgun-wielding version:

      • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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        Elmo’s original voice actor had a bunch of sexual allegations against him. Republicans love that.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    It’s just all vengeance and spite for decades of having to “tolerate” even a modicum of liberalism in their lives.

    • wampus@lemmy.ca
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      I disagree with the defunding, as many of the programs supported by NPR and PBS are pretty interesting / educational – but to claim its just a ‘modicum’ of liberalism in regular media channels is a bit odd, especially if you look outside ‘just’ the ‘news’ (news sources are slanted towards right wing, definitely).

      But if you look at things like netflix/most streaming services, or hollywood movies, or ‘leisure’ type shows in general, there’s far more than a ‘modicum’ of liberalism.